Meet Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the California judge taking on Meta

It’s been a crazy four months for Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The judge in the Northern District of California spent late April and much of May in her downtown Oakland courtroom, overseeing the high-profile battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman.

Now, the 61-year-old Gonzalez Rogers is gearing up for week two of a trial that could go a long way in determining the fate of Meta’s advertising business, as California Attorney General Rob Bonta leads a coalition of state AGs in litigating what’s being hailed as social media’s “Big Tobacco moment.”

In between the two trials, Gonzalez Rogers was named chief judge of the court, 15 years after being nominated to serve there by then-President Barack Obama. She replaced Judge Richard Seeborg, who held the role for five years, and takes over at a time when tech companies are bigger and more powerful than ever and artificial intelligence is driving more high-stakes fights into the courtroom.

The district includes San Francisco, where OpenAI is headquartered, as well as all of Silicon Valley, home to Meta and most of its technology peers. For Gonzalez Rogers, the job is the capstone of a 35-year legal career in California, where she began in private practice before being appointed to the Alameda County Superior Court in 2008 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Known to many as YGR, Gonzalez Rogers has developed a reputation for her no-nonsense attitude.

“I would describe her as a pistol,” said Steve Berman, a managing partner at Hagens Berman who served as co-lead counsel against Big Tobacco in the 1990s and has litigated against Apple before Gonzalez Rogers in several cases. “If lawyers give her bulls—, she just goes after them.”

A native of Houston, Gonzalez Rogers did her undergraduate work at Princeton and received her law degree from the University of Texas. She then joined law firm Cooley in 1991, becoming the firm’s first Latina associate.

During her time as a state judge, she caught the attention of then-Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. Feinstein, who died in 2023, later recommended Gonzalez Rogers’ nomination to the federal bench to President Obama.

In 2012, she inherited Pepper v. Apple, an early antitrust challenge to the App Store. IPhone owners alleged Apple forced them to buy apps through its store alone, allowing the company to charge a 30% commission and push prices higher. Gonzalez Rogers initially dismissed the case, though the Supreme Court later took it up and ruled that consumers could sue the company.

Around the same time, Gonzalez Rogers oversaw an antitrust case, involving…